By Yvonne Tuah
Its sound is unmistakable: soothing, distinct, and enchanting.
There is something in the music of the sape that seems to echo the rainforest itself, from raindrops glinting through the leaves to the soft whispers of giant trees shifting in the wind.
It is a sound that greets visitors arriving in Sarawak, a near-anthem at official events and, increasingly, a musical signature synonymous with Sarawak.
Once heard mainly in the deep recesses of Borneo and played largely by the Orang Ulu of Central Borneo, the sape has travelled a remarkable distance from its humble beginnings as a two-string boat lute associated with shamans and healing ceremonies.
Healing strings
Legend has it that the sape was born of a need to heal. In one telling, the wife of a traditional healer fell ill and dreamed one night of an instrument carved from “adau” (merbau wood). She described the sound to her husband, who carved a sape from an adau tree and played it for her. By the next day she was up and dancing, healed. In another telling, it was the healer himself who dreamed, and who was told to carve a piece of the tree and string it with pineapple fibres, then play it for his ailing wife. He did, and by morning she was better.
Whichever version of the legend is told, the strings running through both is the same: the sape was born as an instrument of healing.
For the Orang Ulu Kenyah, adau wood consequently came to hold a place of deep cultural significance.
In earlier times, shamans used the old sape, or “sape bali”, a two-string lute, during healing ceremonies. Its music was said to be more haunting and hypnotic than the sape heard today.
Imagine a Borneo untouched by outside influence, its music drawn from the rainforest, the sape built from the jungle itself. In its barest form the instrument is modest: barely a metre long, carved from a solid block of wood into its distinctive boat-like form, traditionally from prized adau wood, and strung with two rattan strings.
Today it wears more colour, materials and artistic flair, with fixed frets, six strings, and modern guitar fixtures and tuning that make it practical for the stage.
But while its form has changed over the years, its voice remains the same.
Its evolution has not simply been about making an old instrument more convenient but keeping a musical tradition audible in an age moving at a relentless pace.
Tuning to the new-age
For sape maestro Mathew Ngau Jau, the transformation of the sape is something he has witnessed firsthand.
He remembers a time when the sape was almost entirely made of wood, with its steel guitar strings being one of its few modern touches.
When Mathew first began performing with the sape officially outside his village, he was a young man in his 30s teaching at SMK Bau. He would bring his sape from his village in Long Semiyang, Ulu Baram, to perform at school festivals and functions.
Those performances opened another door.
The sape began attracting attention, and invitations to perform in Kuching followed, and soon, it caught the attention of the Sarawak Tourism Board and Tourism Malaysia, setting him on a decades-long career advocating for the instrument.
Together with legendary sape players including the late Tusau Padan and Uchau Bilung, he helped take sape music beyond Sarawak, then beyond Malaysia, eventually onto the global stage.
But bringing the instrument to larger audiences presented a practical problem: in the early days, the sape was simply not loud enough.
In its near rudimentary form, the instrument was made almost entirely from wood, with adjustable frets and wooden tuning pegs. Its steel strings were a modern addition, but projecting its sound across a large performance hall remained difficult. Tuning could also become a drawn-out affair. The movable frets and wooden pegs had to be adjusted for different songs, making the instrument difficult to prepare and manage during performances.
“I remember my first trip overseas. I was playing at a big dinner, and they tried to get the sound louder by putting a microphone near the sape. The sound was better, but it still wasn’t very good.
“Then, after the performance, someone came up to me and suggested installing a guitar pickup in the sape. He saw me struggling with my sape during my performance, so he came over and he had it (guitar pickup) fixed on the sape for me. That was how I learned to use a guitar pickup with my sape and I came back with it, everyone started using it for theirs.”
The change was deceptively simple.
Many of the sape today are fitted with guitar pickups on the soundboard to amplify their sound. The instrument has also evolved to feature fixed frets and more strings, with contemporary versions commonly carrying six strings.
A cultural guardian and the Keeper of the Kenyah Ngorek Songs, Mathew also saw a way to keep two causes alive by pairing Kenyah folk songs with the sape. The addition gave the instrument broader appeal, while keeping the Kenyah folk songs from fading.
“It’s a way for me to introduce to the people our folk songs, if not, they’ll be lost. It makes things more interesting. Before this, our people used to just sing our folk songs in harmony just as it is, without any accompanying music instruments. Now, after I introduced the sape to it, it becomes very beautiful to hear.”
One example is “Lan E Tuyang”, a song of friendship that began as a Kenyah folk song and to which he set a tune on the sape.
Pride in the journey
Now, beneath the drone of cicadas and away from the usual din of traffic, he sits at his Lan E Tuyang homestay in Bau, not far from SMK Bau where, years ago, he first brought the sape into the spotlight. He works on his art in the quiet, surrounded by a collection of sape and paintings of his own making, each carrying the Kenyah interpretation of the “Tree of Life”.
More than four decades after he began championing the traditional musical instrument of the Bornean rainforest, he looks back with pride and satisfaction at how far the sape has travelled. As a sape-maker himself, he has passed on the knowledge of sape-making to a younger generation, including his nephew Ezra Tekola, a member of local renowned traditional-modern fusion band At Adau, of which Mathew’s own son, Jackson Lian Ngau, is also a part of. Ezra has taken up the craft of making sape and other traditional instruments, while also becoming a sape player himself.
Mathew still occasionally exchanges his paintbrushes for carving tools, preferring to make a sape by hand. But as more young people take an interest in the instrument, the responsibility of carrying the tradition no longer rests solely on his shoulders.
The baton is moving.
“I feel very proud now because when I first started I thought I have that responsibility to revive my culture with my sape in this modern world. Now, more people have started to play sape. It’s everywhere. I’m very happy to see this is now thriving.”
To the young generation, Mathew, a national living heritage of the sape music, offers this advice: “Never forget the original sound of the sape. You must know the original beauty of the sape before you explore the contemporary side. And to our young Orang Ulu, you must keep our culture. Be proud of your culture.”
Waking the Lutong
The sape may be the sound that identifies Sarawak, but Elizabeth Bungan Peter has her eye on its lesser-known sister. Founder and principal of Bungan Creative, a school teaching the sape and other traditional instruments, this 36-year-old is on a mission to breathe new life into the lutong.
Often described as the female counterpart to the sape, the lutong is softer in tone compared with the more prominent sape, and traditionally, it is played mainly by women to accompany the sape. In its traditional form, the lutong is made entirely out of wood and is larger than the sape. Made to be set on the floor and played seated, its six strings, three to a side, are played simultaneously with both hands, demanding dexterity and a keen ear to tune its many adjustable frets (“enten” in Kenyah) and tuners (“weng”) on the go, mid-song.
Today, however, its survival depends on a dwindling pool of knowledge. And for Elizabeth, the first challenge was finding someone who could teach her. Few living people truly know how to play the lutong, and those who do are elderly and live deep in rural Sarawak, requiring sometimes a journey of eight hours inland.
Elizabeth, a Kenyah-Beketan born in Belaga, Kapit, and the current chairwoman of the Persatuan Anak Seni Sape Kuching (Pusak), first encountered the lutong while tracing the origins of the sape and the old songs it can carry, as a sape player herself. Her research took her searching far and wide across Sarawak for someone who still played it, until she approached Mathew, who introduced her to Balu Pang Selong from his own village of Long Semiyang, Ulu Baram.
With Pusak’s help and support from the Sarawak Arts Council, Elizabeth began holding workshops on the instrument last year, with Pang Selong as guide and mentor. It was then that Pang Selong handed over her 13-year-old lutong made out of belian wood, a gesture symbolising the passing of a legacy, and Elizabeth became its bearer. The weight of that responsibility is heavy much like the instrument, but she is determined to carry it, obstacles and all.
Learning the lutong, Elizabeth had only a week of face-to-face, hands-on lessons from Pang Selong before she had to return to her village. After that, Elizabeth relied on old videos to sharpen her skills and understanding of playing the lutong.
Even with a true master’s guidance, the instrument needed adjusting to suit how people play today and to draw more players. It took considerable research and ingenuity as well as advice from other sape and traditional instrument makers, to arrive at a modern lutong that is more practical and easier to grasp. To ease performance on stage, Elizabeth expanded it to up to 10 strings with fixed frets, set to the pentatonic scale. And taking a page from the contemporary sape, the current lutong is now modified with guitar fixtures and pegs to amplify its sound.
“I’m a player, a performer, and also a teacher. When I look at it from the perspective of a performer, tuning the lutong for every song is tedious. We had to fix it, just like with the sape. We changed the tuning pegs so that it would be more presentable and easier to use during performances.”
Throughout her journey of reintroducing and evolving the lutong, Elizabeth has learned four traditional songs associated with the instrument including “Det Diet Tapung Kitan”, a song composed specifically to include the lutong, as well as “Leleng”, “Pemung Jai” and “Datun Julud”. She has also learned to incorporate the lutong into her own composition, “One Journey”.
And there is still more to be discovered. Her journey to revive the lutong has led Elizabeth to uncover the existence of another form of the instrument, a bamboo lutong that has since gone extinct. For now, however, her focus remains on raising the lutong’s profile and bringing the instrument to the forefront.
While the first steps of Elizabeth’s road to revive the lutong were an uphill climb, it has eased somewhat with the support of Sarawak Arts Council’s funding of the first 20 contemporary lutong for her classes, and the fruits of her labour are now taking shape. Elizabeth and Bungan Creative recently marked a year since officially reintroducing the lutong, with the first batch of lutong players in Kuching performing live for an audience. Beyond Kuching, with the backing of Pusak and the Sarawak Arts Council, they have taken expos and workshops to other parts of Sarawak, restoring a voice to an instrument that was close to falling silent while opening the door for anyone keen to learn it.
“If we want this heritage to continue, we need people who are willing to learn and carry it forward. We cannot expect the next generation to know the lutong if we do not give them the opportunity to discover and learn about it themselves.”
Staying on the true path
Though she has reworked the instrument, Elizabeth stresses fidelity to the original, keeping to the tune of the traditional lutong and never straying far, however much easier it becomes to play. In her lessons and workshops she teaches the traditional instrument first, then the contemporary version, which nonetheless draws the greater uptake among students, young and old.
“I must carry the tradition. If people ask me about the lutong, I will tell them about the lutong, and I will also share a little bit of its history. That is how I bring it to people and reach their hearts, so they can get to know the lutong.”
She recalls her sape teacher Jimpau Balan, who instilled in her the need to stay true to her identity as a Kenyah and Orang Ulu even while introducing evolved versions of the lutong and other traditional instruments.
“He would knock some sense into me and say, ‘You must! Don’t forget your identity. This is the traditional way. This is how the ‘Datun Julud’ sounds before you play the contemporary version of Datun Julud,” she said with mirth.
“Today, we are seeing the lutong being used in a much wider range of forms and applications. And to me, there is nothing wrong with that, because culture naturally evolves. What is important is that as we develop and adapt our heritage, we must not lose its original identity.”
The same goes for the sape. Elizabeth, who has taught her own classes under Bungan Creative since 2018, insists that students understand the meaning of the original song, passed down the generations, before they move on to the standardised version on a contemporary sape.
“When it comes to teaching because we want to preserve the tradition, but at the same time, we don’t want to prevent it from evolving. As we pursue modernisation, we have to bring the traditional elements along with us.
“So, before my students even touch the instrument, they must first learn the history of the sape and know the story behind each song and learn its original melody.”
This matters as songs played on the sape and the lutong in their traditional forms are hard to notate, their tunes ever shifting. In the olden days songs were memorised, not written down, as to play these instruments was first, to know the melody.
Relevance in modernity
For 35-year-old sape maker and player Ezra, this balancing act between inheritance and innovating tradition is equally important.
Growing up in a musical family, with both his father and uncle experts of the sape. He began experimenting with sape-making while still in secondary school before developing the craft further in early adulthood.
Learning under masters within his own family also instilled in him the importance of preserving the roots of the instrument and its melodies.
Ezra returns regularly to his village and other Orang Ulu settlements, attending family gatherings and festivals where he listens to songs sung and played by older generations.
He records them, studies them and asks about their meanings, whether literal or metaphorical, in a bid to enhance it to better fit the ears of today.
“That’s where I can compose new songs for the sape and fuse it with modern music. For example, I’ll compose the tune according to its traditional origins, but I’ll fuse it with music that follows the timeline of the generation such as pop and others.
“It’s my way of making it interesting for the younger generation. By making it catchy and at the same time, still keeping a traditional aspect of it.”
By fusing the traditional with the modern, he hopes to pique the curiosity of younger listeners about the old music underneath. You can hear it in At Adau’s sound: the original melody of the traditional song remains, carried and enhanced by modern arrangements.
The road to truly understanding the sape is still long for Ezra despite constant exposure to the instrument. He admits several old Kenyah songs still elude him on the sape, yet it is a journey he pursues relentlessly.
Beyond the sape, he aims to introduce contemporary versions of other older Orang Ulu instruments such as the Jatong Lotang, a traditional xylophone percussion instrument, and the Selingut, a traditional nose flute made of bamboo. For the sape itself, he is researching ways to return it to wooden pegs in place of guitar pegs while keeping it practical for performance. Through it all, he holds to his uncle’s words: keep the traditional part of Orang Ulu art intact, while continuing to expose it and carry it forward.
One heart, one soul
Today, the sape and lutong are no longer confined to the communities from which they emerged.
Their music has travelled beyond the jungles and villages of Borneo, reaching performers and audiences across Sarawak and beyond. Their growing presence among people of different backgrounds has given the instruments another life, one in which they increasingly form part of Sarawak’s broader cultural identity.
Perhaps their greatest strength lies not in how much they have changed, but in how much of their original voice remains audible beneath the change.
The instruments evolve. The hands that play them change. The audiences grow.
Yet the old melodies continue to surface, carrying with them fragments of memory, identity and place, creating a bridge, a uniting force that crosses generations and communities.
As Pang Selong puts it:
“Burn that spirit within, to promote the culture of Kenyah, not only to Kenyah but the entire community. (When) one is different than the others, that is when we train our mind by instilling the spirit of ‘one heart, one soul’, so that we may live without division, together as one community.” – DayakDaily
